


Show Me

by scifigeek14



Series: Conversations [12]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Gen, M/M, Post-Thor: Ragnarok (2017), Thorki - Freeform, but tbh this isnt romantic, i suppose I better tag the, jotun loki makes an appearance, lightning and ICE, this time because thor is gushing a bit, thor and loki talk about magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-12
Updated: 2018-06-12
Packaged: 2019-05-21 08:33:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14912027
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scifigeek14/pseuds/scifigeek14
Summary: Thor is excited to finally practice magic with Loki, he just didn't imagine that it would involve so much talking.





	Show Me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LeseLille](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LeseLille/gifts), [bonchan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bonchan/gifts).



> Notes:   
> Prompts from LeseLille (loki in blue) and Bonchan (them practicing magic). I hope you don't mind sharing.
> 
> This is mix of 2 prompts so it’s a little longer than usual … playing fast and loose with the seidr rules because 1. The mcu is super vague about how magic works (especially Loki’s magic) and technically that’s the only canon I’m adhering to not the comics or Norse mythos. And 2. I can’t be bothered to go do research on Asgardian seidr for such a short one shot. Sorry not sorry. You don’t have to read it if you are a stickler. 
> 
> Shout out to Foundlingmother for the idea to combine these two. you've been amazing!

“Are we going to spar?” Thor asked as they entered the large armory, excited at the prospect. It had been a long time since they’d fought for fun rather than out of desperation or anger.

“Not right now. I just imagine that we’ll need a big, open space for your lightning,” Loki answered, walking over to the center of the room. “I asked everyone to clear the room for the day, so no one will accidently get zapped.”

“A good idea,” Thor agreed, coming over to stand by Loki. “So, seidr practice then.”

“Indeed. You need to learn control. I can help with that.” He sat down in a cross-legged position on the floor. “But you’re going to need great focus if you have any hope in this. Think you can do that?” His eyebrow raised in a challenge.

“Of course.” Thor dropped down across from him, tucking his ankles underneath himself. “I will be the perfect student.”

“I’ll believe that when I see it.”

“Prepare to be made a believer, brother,” Thor boasted, teasingly, before his face settled into a more serious expression. “Where do we begin?”

“There are different types of seidr,” Loki explained, adopting a patient tone, as if speaking to a child. “All of our people have some form of latent and natural seidr. Many who do not nurture their seidr, or have a very low level of natural ability, choose to become warriors, politicians, or artisans. But everyone has it.”

“Do you think Earth does? Do all realms?”

“I’m less certain. It is possible. After all, we have already encountered one Midgardian sorcerer, even if he was a low-level hack. Perhaps Midgardian magic is of a lower level, or it needs some sort of aid to bring it forth, such as in your Captain’s strength.”

“Or Wanda’s telekinetic powers.”

“I don’t know who that is. Can we get back to the point?”

“Sorry. Everyone has seidr. Go on.

“Everyone has seidr, but it shows itself in different ways.”

“Like, how I have lightning and you have illusions.”

“Indeed. Taking it a step further, all of my illusions, teleportations, materializations, and miscellaneous tricks are learned skills. They are applications of my seidr through years of study, until these actions come to me as naturally as your lightning jumps to your aid. My seidr is more malleable than yours in its natural state. It is why I was sent to learn from mother, and you, from the warriors.”

“So, your seidr is more of a blank slate,” Thor said, starting to understand what Loki was telling him. “Whereas, mine has a natural state of being, which is my lightning.”

“Now you’re catching on.” Loki grinned. “But, that isn’t to say that you couldn’t learn other tricks if you applied your focus and practiced the skills enough.”

“Seriously?” Thor asked, excited at the prospect that he could learn to do some of the tricks that Loki knew.

“With years of study, yes. But, let’s focus on controlling the powers you already have.”

“But, if your seidr is a blank slate, and most of your magics are worked through study, how do we apply your knowledge to my lightning?”

“Now you are asking the right questions,” Loki told him with a smile and a twinkle in his eye which almost looked like pride. It gave Thor a warm, fuzzy feeling in his chest and stomach. “The seidr that I grew up using was more flexible than yours, but it wasn’t completely a blank slate as you inferred. It _does_ have a natural form.”

“It does?” Thor frowned, confused by the turn of the conversation.  

“Can’t you guess?” Loki’s expression took on a grimmer countenance, his smile wry and full of contempt. “Or did you forget so soon that I’m not of Aesir blood?”

“Ice.” The realization burst from Thor in a hushed whisper, as though it had been punched in the gut. Loki was a Frost Giant, which meant that he had a prediction for ice magic. But it was a skill that Thor had never seen him use—though, he had heard that Heimdall had first hand experience.

“The reason that my magic didn’t take the form of ice for so long was because Odin was blocking it. His seidr was stronger than mine.”

“He was blocking your powers?” Thor tried not to think ill of the dead, and he knew that his father had often believed that he was doing what was best, but his father had ended up doing a lot of shitty things in the process. It made sense why he would try to suppress Loki’s ice powers, since they were a clear indicator of the truth of his birth, but it was an awful thing to do to his own son.

“Remember the first time that Odin fell into the Odin Sleep, when we were young, and I had the chills the whole time? Mother told us that I’d come down with an illness, but it stands to reason that it was my natural ice trying to manifest when his seidr was weakened by the Sleep. It’s a miracle I didn’t turn blue in the middle of court.”

Thor couldn’t help but snort at that, but he couldn’t escape the seriousness of the conversation. He reached out and took Loki’s hands in his own and squeezed them. He wondered if Loki ever felt cold these days. He hoped not. He hoped that Loki had mastered his ice, banished the ice in his soul, ordered it to do his will.

“And the second time, you’d already discovered the truth,” Thor observed.

“Odin’s control waned, but I’d already grown my own control through my studies of seidr enough to keep it at bay. But I still didn’t know how to control it, to make use of it.”

“But, Heimdall said you froze him solid.”

“I was channeling the power of the Casket. It amplified the raw power and gave me a focal point through which to centralize and direct my powers. Sound familiar?”

“Exactly like father said Mjolnir was for me!” Thor exclaimed excitedly.

“Exactly like,” Loki agreed. “But now we are both without our channels. I had access to the Casket as Odin, obviously, but I had been trying to work on controlling my powers without it. And, if I do say so myself, I’ve become quite good at it.”

“If you’re going to brag, you’d better be prepared to prove it, brother. Show me your illustrious ice powers.”

“I don’t appreciate the sass, Thor. That’s supposed to be my thing,” Loki complained.

“Seidr won’t be the first thing I’ve learned from you,” Thor returned.

“I suspect that Stark is more to blame in this instance.”

“Stop deflecting.”

“I can’t.”

“But you just said!” Thor complained.

“I can!” Loki insisted, sounding frustrated. “But I can’t without…” He trailed off. Thor waited for what he was going to say. There was a time he would have shouted or shaken Loki until he gave up the truth. Instead he waited. Loki would speak eventually. Instead he watched Loki’s mouth pucker and his eyebrows crease. He watched him steadfastly avoid meeting Thor’s gaze. He watched his fingers tap nervously against Thor’s own where he only just realized he still held on. By the time Loki spoke again, Thor had all but figured out what he was going to say. “I can only use it when I’m in my Jotun form… or I get frostbite.”

“Show me,” Thor repeated, calmly. Now it was he who sounded like he was speaking to a child. Loki huffed, blowing his hair out of his face. It reminded Thor of Sif when she was trying to pretend that she wasn’t upset about something. Thor squeezed Loki fingers. “Show me.”

“It’s not pretty. I look like a monster.”

“You will no doubt look like a Jotun, not a monster. And as circumstances have come to show me, they are no more monsters than the rest of us who populate the vast realms of space. After all, I’m pretty sure that, including you, my best friends are a Jotun, a Kronan, and a Hulk. All of whom have been considered a monster at some point, and none of whom actually are.”

“Well, if you’re going to use logic,” Loki grumbled. But even as he groused, a small smile flitted across his lips briefly. “Brace yourself,” He warned, returning Thor’s squeeze to his fingers.

It was his fingers that shifted first. They didn’t become freezing, for which Thor had prepared himself. They didn’t burn cold to the touch like frost did. They just felt chilled. It was as though Loki had dipped his fingers in cold water or snow before taking Thor’s hands. Or, like he had really bad circulation. It was nothing that Thor hadn’t felt in holding Loki’s small hands as a child. Thor realized, that he had likely been feeling this vary sensation from Loki as his powers struggled to manifest.

Thor looked down and watched as a pale blue color seeped across Loki’s fingers, over his knuckles, and up to his wrists, spreading like spilled ink in water. Thor found himself frowning as the spread of ice blue disappeared under Loki’s sleeves, wanting to watch its full journey over Loki’s fair skin. He looked up to watch Loki’s face change and was startled to see that his eyes had shifted to an unfamiliar reddish-gold color.

They were stunning. They practically glowed. And they only became starker when the blue flush caught up to his eyes and stole its way across his angular features. Thor felt his mouth gaping open, and he knew he probably looked like an idiot, but he’d never seen a Jotun in such close quarters—at least, not one that he wasn’t fighting.  

He’d never really gotten a good look before at the markings that all Jotun’s had. As children, he, Volstagg, Fandral, Hogun, Sif, and Loki had all played at the game of war. They’d always made Fandral and Loki play the Frost Giants since they were the youngest, smallest, and the most easily bullied.

The marks that covered Loki’s face now were nothing like the rough blue lines painted on with a child’s hand, made to look like horns and war paint. The lines were delicate, barely raised above his skin. The result looked like fine lace or, perhaps more fittingly, like a snowflake.

“Its okay,” Loki said after a moment of Thor’s staring, “I know it’s not my most flattering look.”

“What are you talking about!?” Thor all but shouted. His fingers clamped down so tightly on Loki’s that if they weren’t already blue then they would have turned such from the pressure. “Have you seen yourself? You look so cool!”

“What?” Loki asked, startled. He blinked his red-gold eyes at Thor.

“You look so cool,” Thor repeated. “I always thought that Jotun’s had merely red eyes but yours have this sort of goldish highlight to them when they catch the light. It’s like cat eyes! And the lines on your face are really beautiful!”

“Careful, you’ll give me a complex with your gushing,” Loki warned, his smirk returning with his confidence. “Besides,” He sniffed in an exaggerated show of disdain, “it doesn’t matter how I look.” He shook his hands free of Thor’s. “What matters is this.”

He held his hands out palms up and Thor watched as ice crystals formed over his skin. They began as a light frost spiraling outward in swirls, but quickly solidified into larger shimmering crystals. Thor reached out and touched one. It was cold to the touch but, like Loki’s fingers, didn’t burn. He carefully picked one up. He turned it around in his hand, rubbing his fingers over the smooth surface. It wasn’t wet at all; it felt like stone.

“It’s like a diamond.”

“It won’t melt until I tell it to.”

“Really?” Thor turned it around and held it up to the light. “Even if I hit it with lightning?”

“You can try to hit it with your lightning after you’ve mastered your control better.”

“You’re worse that our old tutor,” Thor pouted, remembering the stern task-master who had taught them their basic lessons as children.

“You take that back!” Loki threw an ice crystal at him.

“I thought we were supposed to be learning control!”

“We are!”

“Then why are you throwing things at me!”

“Because you are an infuriating moron!” Loki huffed, crossing his arms. The frost fell from his fingers and landed on his knees like a light layer of snow and the ice crystals in Thor’s possession melted. Thor laughed. Even in blue, his brother still looked the same.  

“Alright. I’m sorry,” Thor placated, brushing the snow from Loki’s knees. “I’ll be a model student,” He assured, reiterating his earlier promise.

“It took me a long time to learn how to focus my powers like that. When I started out I was filling whole rooms in the palace with ice, but it melted quite quickly,” Loki explained. “It was like I was a faucet with too broad an opening. The water came out, but it was a weak spray and it went all over. I needed to put my thumb over the nozzle to increase the power and focus it.”

“I understand,” Thor said, enjoying the metaphor that Loki was building. “But how?”

“Hours of practice.” Loki grinned like a shark. “and hours of meditation.”

Thor’s smile dropped from his face. He hated meditation.

**Author's Note:**

> Pretty much out of prompts for this fic series. so either give me more or wait til inspiration strikes.
> 
> still working on my longer chapter fic. i'm about 6 chapters in and i'm hitting the "need to do research and world building" point. haha.


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